We’re proud of our committed faculty members, who are proven leaders at York University and within the community. Engaged in vital, ground-breaking work, they’re earning honours for their scholastic achievements and research beyond the classroom, including internal and external awards and research chair appointments. These dynamic individuals are significantly enhancing the quality of learning for York students and making positive change on a local and global scale.
Antonella Valeo has been working with ESL learners and teachers for over 25 years and is currently an Associate Professor at York University where she teaches graduate courses in applied linguistics, TESOL and ESL to undergraduate students. As a researcher her interests are embedded within the ESL classroom and include a focus on classroom interaction and language teacher development. Over the years, her work with TESL Ontario has both inspired and reflected these interests. She joined TESL Toronto as membership secretary and later served as President, Conference Chair and Affiliate Representative. Her work with TESL Ontario was diverse and included involvement in the early development of TESL training institutional accreditation and serving as local Co-chair when TESL Ontario hosted the TESOL Convention in 2015. As an emerging researcher, TESL Ontario welcomed her contributions as Research Committee Chair and called on her to work with the team that developed the framework for Post TESL Certificate Training. Throughout her time in the field, whether as instructor, curriculum developer, language teacher trainer, administrator or researcher, her engagement with TESL Ontario has served as an anchor and reminded her of the community that continues to inspire her today.
Maria João Dodman, Associate Professor of Portuguese & Luso-Brazilian Studies in York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, travelled to the Azores to take part in the celebrations of the Day of the Azores, where she received the Insignia do Governo Regional dos Açores – Medal for Professional Merit.
The recognition is one of the most distinguished honours given by the government of the autonomous region of Azores.
Presenting the medal to Dodman on June 10 was Vasco Cordeiro, president of the Azores.
“I’m particularly honoured to receive such recognition from the Government of the Azores,” said Dodman. “Considering that I came to Canada to search for a better life like many of those immigrant women who came before and after me, this was a surreal moment.
“There is much work to be done and I remain more committed than ever to continue to tell the stories of a people who suffered greatly from centuries of isolation and neglect, who were victimized by corruption, by extreme poverty and violence.”
Dodman immigrated to Canada from the Azores in 1989. Originally a Renaissance scholar, Dodman turned her interests in 2006 to the literature produced in the Azores, and to bringing more awareness to the archipelago’s unique identity. She developed an undergraduate discipline that focuses solely on the Azores, the only of its kind in a Canadian university.
Her research interests include Renaissance literature, colonial encounters and representations of beauty, ugliness and otherness in early modern Iberian literature.
She is also co-founder and co-director of the Canadian Centre for Azorean Research & Studies. In 2016, Dodman published AndarIlha. Viagens de um Hifen (Wanderer. Voyages of a Hyphen), a book of short narratives that focuses on Azorean identity, immigrant issues and hyphenated culture. The book received high praise from literary critics in Portugal and an expanded English translation is slotted for publication in spring 2019 in the United States.
It is mostly in Dodman’s creative work where the Azores appears frequently as a site of inspiration and magic steeped in açorianidade, a concept in which nature, isolation, insularity, sea and volcanic rock triumph over history. Dodman is particularly interested in rescuing marginal voices and their stories of injustice and exclusion.
York University Associate Professor Eve Haque has been awarded a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at the Graduate School of the City University of New York’s (CUNY’s) Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) for the Fall 2019 term.
Haque is an associate professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. Her research and teaching interests include multiculturalism, white settler colonialism and language policy, with a focus on the regulation and representation of racialized im/migrants in white settler societies.
She has published in such journals as Social Identities, the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and Canadian Ethnic Studies, among others. She is also the author of Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race and Belonging in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2012).
As a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at CUNY, Haque will focus on the area of multilingualism, which – along with immigration, inequality, global cities and critical university studies – is one of the focus areas at ARC.
“The CUNY fellowship will allow me to continue to develop my research into language policy issues in particular, and issues related to the sociology of language more generally,” Haque said, adding that she’s keen to have the opportunity to compare, share and discuss current and developing Indigenous and non-official language policies and programs in the U.S. “This will give some insight into how we may tackle some of these questions here in Canada.”
As a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Haque will further her research into language policy in Canada, with a focus on non-official languages and Indigenous languages.
“It is my hope that this research can give us insight into how language sits at the intersection of social and political relations,” she said. “I hope this work will have policy implications for linguistic justice in Canada and beyond.”
The prestigious university-wide Teaching Award was bestowed upon one of our distinguished Spanish professors. Watch the convocation ceremony wherein Professor Maria Figueredo is introduced by Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Dean Mukherjee-Reed and presented with the 2016 President’s University Wide Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence in the category of Full-Time Faculty.